United Commercial Bank Limited holds its 34th Annual General Meeting at a city auditorium recently. Directors of the bank, Managing Director and senior officials and shareholders were present. The AGM approves 15pc cash dividend for the financial year 2016.

Moreover, Deputy Managing Directors Mohammed Shawkat Jamil, Md. Sohrab Mustafa, Golam Awlia, Arif Quadri and Mohammad Habibur Rahman Chowdhury along with other senior officials and different managers of UCB were also present at the meeting.

Review of bank’s performance was the main agenda of the meeting. Alongside, evaluation of bank’s existing strategic policy for catering the future tactical work plan to expand the quality of client service and product diversity was also the issue of the meeting.

Abu Hena Mohd. Razee Hassan, Deputy Governor of Bangladesh Bank, presiding over a conference on \'Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing\' for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Officers of City Bank\'s at its head office in the city recently. Sohail RK H

Interbank messaging service SWIFT, which is used to transfer trillions of dollars between banks every day, will launch a new tool to spot fraudulent messages, seeking to restore trust in the system after millions of dollars were stolen in cyber raids.

Belgium-based SWIFT said on Wednesday that it will offer clients a service that will be able to learn a user bank's messaging patterns so that it can spot if a payment is being made to an unusual counterparty or for an unusual amount.

Last year $81 million was stolen from Bangladesh's central bank after thieves hacked into its SWIFT system and sent instructions to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pay money from Bangladesh Bank's account to parties in Asia.

SWIFT was criticized last year by some users and industry players for failing to beef up security on its system even as the risk of cyber attacks increased and the network expanded to include smaller institutions with more lax security procedures.

Though SWIFT launched a range of new security measures and services in September, the latest product -- due to be introduced early next year -- will "red-flag", or put on hold, payment instructions that exceed limits set by clients or are deemed anomalous by the system's learning software.

Luc Meurant, SWIFT's head of financial crime compliance services, told Reuters that the service would be targeted initially at institutions and central banks with small messaging volumes because they might not be able to afford to develop such detection tools themselves.

He said the service could cost small users as little as 10,000 euros a year, though prices have yet to be finalised.

Bangladesh is currently the second largest cotton importer in the world sourcing mostly from India and China

African countries can be a major source of cotton used as raw materials in the Bangladesh’s garment industry, said Finance Minister AMA Muhith.

He said the African cotton is “of good quality and easy for import.”

Bangladesh is currently the second largest cotton importer in the world sourcing mostly from India and China.

“The cotton that we import from India and China is not original. It is very difficult to get original cottong from these countries. African countries can be good alternative for cotton import,” finance minister said.

He was speaking at the inaugural session of the African-Asian Cotton B2B Meeting at The Westin Hotel, Dhaka on Sunday.

International Islamic Trade Financing Corporation (ITFC) of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group organised the meeting.

ITFC is financing and supervising a cotton development project in West Africa, titled “Cotton Development and Partnership Programme.”

The meeting aimed to improve business to business relations between African and Bangladeshi importers.

“Our economy is driven by garment industry which will continue to dominate the economy for the next 20 to 25 years,” Muhith said.

“Bangladesh’s garment industry mostly depends on imported cotton for raw materials. If Africa produces more cotton, it will be helpful for Bangladesh,” he said.

Mohammad Shahidullah said: “African countries produce high quality cotton. Import of African is also more cost-effective compared to other countries.”

He said: “African cotton industry is purely export-oriented while India and China have their own demands of cotton. As they have their own demands, importing cotton from India and China is sometimes challenging,” he said.

Mohammad Ali Khokon said the cotton import increased to 7.087m bales from 4.876m bales in the last five years with Africa making increasing contribution to the global cotton supply. He said Bangladesh has now a dominant position in cotton for 425 spinning mills.

According to BTMA data, Bangladeshi mills are sourcing cotton from countries like India, the United States and Africa. Currently, Bangladesh sources around 20.88% of its total cotton demand from African countries.